Tony commented that "Bernard suggests in today's terms, agricola could
well have been a professor of Mining - Maybe not.". Maybe so! Most, if
not all the early botonists were medical doctors who carefully OBSERVED
and carefully RECORDED their observations and developed the principles
of taxonomy. They were certainly scientists. While it is true that the
study of plants was essential to the medicine of the time, expertise in
several fields was common in those early years. Voltaire was in
correspondence with the leading scientists of Europe and duplicated
their experiments in his laboratory.
Even in the modern world brilliant individuals have broad
interests before and after they specialize. When I was completing my
last course in physics, a fellow student who was specializing in
medicine, was the top of the class (marks of 98 % and higher). Luke had
already been selected to complete his degree in medicine in a laboratory
doing cancer research. He had deliberately left one course in medicine
uncompleted until he completed majors in mathematics, physics, and
chemistry. He knew that when he entered the research field he would not
have time for anything else, so he was expanding his horizons while he
could. Of course a knowledge of chemistry and physics would be useful,
if not essential, in his specialty field (He was, by the way already an
expert in Chinese herbal medicine and was earning his way by working as
a physiotherapist - don't ask me why he didn't depend on scholarships,
he could certainly have gotten them - even our professor treated him
with deference).
No matter what field he finally chose to enter, Luke would
certainly have credentials as a SCIENTIST. I'm sure that he would have
had no difficulty completing a doctorate in mining engineering.
As I commented to Peter in a private e-mail, history has far too
many examples of establishment experts excluding great advances in
science because they questioned the credentials of the person making the
discovery. The case of the invention of the clock that solved the
problem of longitude is a case in point.
While I was taking a course in geology, my professor gave me a
brochure outlining the discovery of an entirely new fossil form of
trilobite that had been found in the the area in which I lived. As an
engineering geologist, Dr. Okulitch had signed the work, but made it
very clear that ALL the work had been done by local amateurs. It is
interesting to note that some local prospectors, seeing the work being
done, had staked the site and neatly barred the original discoverers
from carrying on any further work. These greedy mining experts believed
incorrectly that if anyone was doing so much work, there must be profit
there. With the area staked, it was no longer possible for anyone to do
any proper research in it, and subsequently someone blasted the
excavation that had already been done.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|